“My joke back to (the parents) is hey, we’ve got a state championship to win here come the 31st,” Cowan said. “But we’ll see.”

Wilsonville won the league title outright with Friday’s 9-3 victory over Glencoe at Wilsonville High School. The win marked the Wildcats’ eighth in a row dating back to April 8, improving their record to 10-2 overall and 8-0 in NWOC play. They are just one of four teams left in the state with two losses or fewer.

Against Glencoe, the Wildcats fell behind 1-0 after the first quarter but rallied to take a 3-2 halftime lead. In the second half, Wilsonville pulled away to score five unanswered goals for the six-goal victory.

The Wildcats were led by freshman Andrew Conway, who converted a team-high three goals off six shots on goal. Senior Alec Jernstedt added two goals and three assists, senior Matt Yavorsky had two goals, and Bradford Patey and Mark Iliyn had one goal each.

Cowan said he continues to be impressed by Conway’s play, who he described as the “single biggest surprise” of the season. Although the coaching staff had concerns early in the season about Conway’s size, Cowan said his natural ability toward lacrosse and play around the net has more than made up for it.

“He has stepped up consistently, showing he can adapt to the situation,” Cowan said. “He can take a pretty hard licking and get right back up, and has some of the best ball movement and agility around the goal coming from either side that I’ve seen from a kid his age in a long time.”

Cowan said he knew Glencoe would give his team a tough game after the two teams battled to a hard-fought 8-7 win for the Wildcats on April 15.

“Glencoe was as scrappy as we expected them to be,” he said. “They made a couple adjustments based upon our first outing, which we also expected as well. I think the key to the game was once our defense woke up, we were able to pretty much shut down their ability to clear the ball out of their own net.”

On April 29, Wilsonville used a six-goal third quarter to pull away from Liberty in a 10-4 win at Liberty High School.

Yavorsky scored a team-high five goals, Patey added three, and Conway and Rob Nicholas each added one.

With the league title in hand, the Wildcats own the conference’s No. 1 seed heading into the playoffs and will face either the No. 2 team from the Three Rivers League, which currently is defending state champion Lakeridge, or the No. 4 team from the Columbia Conference, which is Wilson.